CHAPTER 1 Leadership Margaret John Kelly, D.C., PhD If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all. Mark 9:35 Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve. Matthew 20:28 Key Concepts 1. Scripture offers many types of leadership and reveals Jesus as the servant-leader par excellence. 2. Servant leadership is the Christian approach to organizational tasks, interpersonal relationships, formation, and communitybuilding. 3. Robert Greenleaf popularized the scriptural concept of servant leadership and has influenced both religious and secular organizations as well as the academic management community for several decades. 4. Leadership and management functions are distinct but related and exert mutual influence. 5. Theorists and practitioners provide varying profiles of the successful leader in both the religious and business sectors, but they generally cite vision, self-awareness, empathy, passion, integrity, and credibility as essential qualities for both venues. 5
6. While certain personal traits prepare and assist one to develop as a leader, much of what is considered effective leadership can be acquired through ongoing study and continuing effort. Introduction One of the most persistent questions raised throughout history has been the nature-nurture influence on the development of human persons. Does nature (genetic inheritance) or nurture (environment and opportunity) determine one s abilities and life activities? Historians, biographers, anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists have raised this question in terms of leadership and have probed the lives and performance of personalities as diverse as Stalin and Mother Teresa. The precise degree of influence each factor exerts on an individual s leadership ability will always remain elusive. However, there is general agreement that while some persons appear to have a natural propensity to be leaders even from early childhood days, there is no one personality type or a typical age when the leader emerges fully prepared for the role. On the contrary, leaders tend to experience a series of rises and falls in their careers, especially those who have risen too quickly or have not earned stripes. It is also generally accepted that, given the desire to lead and a willingness to learn how to lead, many have grown into the knowledge, skills, confidence, and wisdom demanded of leaders no matter the field of endeavor or scope of activity. Others have questioned whether there is or should be a difference in the leadership practiced within secular and religious groups. While overly simplistic, there has been a tendency to identify soft human-relations skills with religious leaders and the harder skills of productivity and profit-making with business leaders. However, in recent decades those perceived differences have diminished greatly as religious leaders put more emphasis on structures and systems and business leaders focus on the human, personal aspects of motivation and satisfaction. Also 6 A Concise Guide to Catholic Church Management
during that time, the traditional sharp distinction between leadership as doing the right things (effectiveness) and management as doing things right (operational efficiency) has been challenged because organizational success requires mutuality and integration of both. It is interesting that during that same period, the business world converted its off-site meetings to retreats and began to write and speak of workplace spirituality and doing good while doing well. At the same time, some religious institutions replaced the Gospel language of ministry (administration and administrator) with the corporate vocabulary of chief executive officer as they also struggled with acting business-like or becoming a business. Servant Leadership Within this shifting context, a small book appeared in 1970 that related leadership to one s character and one s desire to serve. Robert Greenleaf s seminal essay, The Servant as Leader, offered a unique and holistic approach to the nature of leadership and the behaviors distinguishing good leadership. Religious groups were early adopters of this new quasi-religious approach because of its scriptural value of service, its call to personal transformation, and its emphasis on community. Many in the business world were slower to join the swell because some corporate leaders thought the servant approach was upside down or soft, lacking the rigor and control required in the competitive world. However, in time many came to understand that being a gentle and humble servant was not the same as being weak. Greenleaf offered a throwback to the wisdom of St. Francis de Sales, who reminded his friends that honey will always draw more bees than vinegar. Greenleaf and Francis de Sales, despite dramatic differences in their historical periods, vocations, and styles, understood that interest in others and affirmation laced with challenge or challenge marked by affirmation will enlist others to advance the vision. Both recognized that the servant-leader frees and engages others while the dominant leader deadens motivation and freezes progress. LEADERSHIP 7
Today, there is considerable agreement that Greenleaf s approach of servant as leader and servant leadership draws on and develops the best within individuals and within organizations, whether they are religious or commercial. In some affluent corporate settings where the trappings of worldly success are very apparent, Greenleaf has become a guru. His people-growing and community-building tenets are admired and imitated. Also, over the years, academics, practitioners, and consultants in both leadership and management have not only expressed respect for Greenleaf s work but have built on his insights. Greenleaf himself developed a whole organization and industry on the concept of servant leadership. Today, there also is significant agreement across the for profit and nonprofit, and the religious and secular sectors that an organization s leadership quality and its organizational performance are directly related. Leadership accounts for the difference between success and failure, however defined in financial, quality service, or growth terms. Workers are willing to follow and carry their share of responsibility, but they also expect a clear direction in which all can walk together. Vision is the role of the leader. Biblical Images of Leadership In introducing servant leadership, Greenleaf was not inventing something new but rather applying a scriptural model to the contemporary organization. He was fond of reminding people that service, serve, and servant appear over thirteen hundred times in the Bible. Indeed, Jesus chose to articulate his own mission as simply service: Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mt. 20:28). In that brief statement, vision, mission, and method are aligned and accessible. It is helpful to remember in this regard that Jesus original workforce was probably no more or no less talented than the ones available in the Church today. Because he modeled the behaviors (habits of acting) inherent in service leadership, he facilitated both the education and formation of his staff. It is only 8 A Concise Guide to Catholic Church Management
when the rhetoric and praxis are congruent and integrated that followers take the leap of trust and join their lot with the leader s. The Old Testament reads as a textbook of leadership styles as we move through the epic experiences of Moses, David, Solomon, Joshua, Jonah, Esther, and so many others. We meet the reticent and the ambitious, the arrogant and the humble, the negotiating and compliant, the victorious and the vanquished. The New Testament is rich with other archetypes like Herod, Pilate, Nicodemus, Peter, Joseph, Paul, Mary, the Samaritan woman, and Tabitha. Those interested in leadership will find Jesus individualized responses to human need and his organizational commentaries both compelling and practical. The gospels show Jesus as the servant-leader par excellence, advocating vision rather than structure, service rather than power, persuasion rather than control, team participation rather than individual performance, and collaboration rather than competition. John the Baptist offers an interesting example as he moves from servant-leader preparing the way of the Lord to servant-follower acknowledging that he must increase; I must decrease (Jn 3:30). They also teach us much about the operational aspects of servant leadership. Christ called his disciples to put the good of the other before one s own good. He taught them that a shared vision gives direction and unites disparate people in a common mission. He demonstrated the need for ongoing formation as he utilized direct instruction, encouragement, and guidance as well as an occasional reprimand blending firmness and kindness. He reminded them that motivations wither and die if not occasionally stirred up, so they had to learn to be strong-hearted to strengthen the weak-hearted. He challenged them to be prudent as serpents and simple as doves, a challenge as paradoxical as the concept of servant-leader itself. At the interpersonal level, Jesus mediated disputes among his followers because he knew that competition born of personal ambition is destructive. He taught the necessity and method of drawing out the gifts of others and investing these talents wisely. He recommended responsible planning, telling stories of building one s house on a firm foundation, assuring sufficient storage LEADERSHIP 9
space for harvests, and securing adequate fuel for the inevitable pre-dawn vigils. Application of Servant-Leader Theory Greenleaf s appropriation of the Gospel message of service has met with great success and exerted great influence in religious and secular circles. The simplicity of the teachings has resonated in people of various ages and cultures. Basically, Greenleaf presented leadership not as the source of power, authority, control, or dominance but as an attitude and perspective about the self, the other, and the meaning of life. Like Jesus, he defined servant leadership more as a way of being than a way of doing. He believed that by first learning to follow well, the servant-leader acquired habits (ways of being with and for others), or what ethicists would call virtues. Emanating from self-awareness and social consciousness, these other-centered personal habits translate into positive organizational behaviors. They coalesce into a distinctive posture that allows one to be both leader-servant and servant-leader at one and the same time. From this dual position, the questions of For whom do I work? or Whom do I serve? and Why do I work? or For what purpose do I serve? are always present to keep one on track and focused on the vision. Greenleaf s relational and communal emphasis is especially appropriate for faith-based organizations that have community as both their means and end. Both Greenleaf and Steven Covey (Seven Habits of Effective People) recognized that the goal of servant leadership is to institutionalize servant habits or virtues (behaviors). Both also cautioned that these will only be institutionalized if the leader leads with a compelling vision, sets clear behavioral expectations, and serves as an authentic practitioner of the values proclaimed. Greenleaf further claimed that when servanthood becomes the shared goal and experience of all the workers, the institution becomes a servant to itself and to the community. This servant institution is really a role and witness definition of the parish, the Catholic hospital, the university, or shelter in any geographic setting. The concept is also at the heart of Ex Corde Ecclesiae, 10 A Concise Guide to Catholic Church Management
in which John Paul II encouraged Catholic universities, with their vast intellectual and material resources, to be in service within the greater Church. The Core Values of the Servant-Leader What led Greenleaf to develop this concept that has gained such reception and has dominated the organizational landscape for these past decades? In a college course called Sociology of the Labor Problem he accepted the challenge of his professor to make the world a better place. This professor, neither dynamic nor charismatic (traits generally but falsely associated with leadership) but a quiet, elderly gentleman, insisted that social change occurs only when persons within institutions, not outside of them, choose to make the institutions forces for the public good. Greenleaf accepted the challenge and became such an internal and external force during his own business career with American Telephone and Telegraph. The professor s advice rings true today. A few theoretical passages from Greenleaf will illustrate his penetrating knowledge of human nature and the wisdom of servant leadership. The servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. That conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. In that awareness two things emerge, the desire to serve others and a desire to serve a purpose or goal beyond themselves. Servant Leadership, p. 7 That person (one who chooses to serve first) is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. For such it will be a later choice to serve after leadership is established. The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types.... The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other peoples highest-priority LEADERSHIP 11
needs are being served. The best test but difficult to administer is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And what is the effect on the less privileged in society; will they benefit, or at least, not be further deprived? Servant Leadership, pp. 13 14 The leader always knows what the direction is and can articulate it for any who are unsure. By clearly stating and restating the goal, the leader gives certainty and purpose to others who may have difficulty in achieving it for themselves. Servant Leadership, p. 15 But if one is a servant, either leader or follower, one is always searching, listening, expecting that a better wheel for these times is in the making. It may emerge any day. Servant Leadership, p. 9 A fresh critical look is being taken at the issues of power and authority, and people are beginning to learn, however haltingly, to relate to one another in less coercive and more creatively supporting ways. A new moral principle is emerging, which holds that the only authority deserving one s allegiance is that which is freely and knowingly granted by the led to the leader in response to, and in proportion to, the clearly evident servant stature of the leader. Servant Leadership, p. 10 Personal Behaviors of the Servant-Leader Throughout the 1970s in corporate boardrooms and in church meetings, Greenleaf elaborated on the behaviors practiced by the servant-leader. These grow out of the basic convictions of the 12 A Concise Guide to Catholic Church Management
dignity of the human person and the respect that is owed to each person because of that dignity and his or her community desires. While the following distillation is an injustice to Greenleaf, it captures the servant-leader. The servant-leader: listens well and seeks to understand the other; uses language that encourages the imagination of others; accepts the role of seeker and searcher for truth; withdraws regularly to renew self; uses power of persuasion, not coercion; tries to create opportunity for others; seeks to remediate organizational flaws from the inside; adopts attitude of solution-finding rather than assigning blame in difficult situations; deals with persons as individuals with unique talents, not as functions; accepts others and empathizes with them; senses the unknowable and foresees the foreseeable; practices foresight and has a good sense of right timing; stays aware of the environment both physical and psychological; conceptualizes what can be and communicates it well; keeps the vision at the center of all activity. LEADERSHIP 13